On the morning of May 2, 2001, Leslie Preer -- a warm, generous 48-year-old woman who her family said saw the world through rose-colored glasses -- didn't show up to work in Washington DC. Her boss drove to the family home in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Her husband Sandy met him there. When police arrived, they found Leslie on the bathroom floor, under the running shower, having suffered a brutal attack.

From the beginning, investigators focused on Sandy. He failed a polygraph. His behavior seemed odd. The couple had debt, arguments, a history of tension. But the male DNA found at the scene and under Leslie's fingernails was never his. Sandy was never charged. He was also never cleared. In 2017, sixteen years after Leslie's murder, Sandy Preer died -- still, in the eyes of many in his community and even Leslie's own family, a suspect.

In 2022, two female cold case detectives picked up the file with fresh eyes, refused to accept Sandy's guilt, and campaigned to get the case approved for forensic genetic genealogy through Othram, a Texas lab specializing in advanced DNA sequencing. The results pointed to a surname: Gligor. A Romanian family with deep roots in Chevy Chase -- and a connection to Lauren, Leslie's daughter, that nobody had looked at closely enough.

Getting the suspect's DNA without alerting him required ingenuity. When he landed at Dulles Airport in June 2024, detectives had bottles of water waiting. He drank. He left. They collected the bottle. The DNA matched the evidence from Leslie's home, definitively and completely.

Melissa covers the full story: Leslie's life and family, the decades of wrongful suspicion, the two detectives who cracked it open, and the interrogation scene that has to be heard to be believed. Sandy didn't live to see his name cleared. Lauren did. And she had 23 years worth of things to say at sentencing.

Hosted by Ed Hydock & Melissa Spivey | A Darkcast Network Production

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